Problem with HighPoint RocketRAID 2300

[xrays]

Hi all... I have a beautiful new MacPro Clone I've configured with information found on this site, and I'm now looking for some advice regarding a problem with a HighPoint RocketRAID 2300 SATA card. So far I haven't been able to get any drives to mount on my desktop, despite the RR BIOS showing the drives are connected, and the web interface showing the same (and the details of the drives).

 

Here's my machine:

MB: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P

RAM: 4x 2GB Corsair Dominator 1066

OS: iDeneb 10.5.5

Vid: ATI 3870 HD

Card: HighPoint RocketRAID 2300

 

I've configured the MB as both ACHI and IDE for on-board SATA connections, with no change (except existing drives showing up as orange icons, and I've applied the ACHI fix for that now). The RR2300 card is a PCIe 1X card, and is running BIOS 2.2, and I have the drivers for the 2310 installed (as instructed by HighPoint and other forum posts). The card appears to be functioning to itself fine, as it recognizes and controls drives attached, but the drives will not mount on the desktop. I have two Seagate 1.5TB drives attached, both pre-formatted with data, and the drives/cables work perfectly if attached to the MB in any SATA ports.

 

I'm looking for anyone that might have a similar RR card installed, or even a similar configuration alltogether, to let me know if they've done anything 'special' to get the card to work. I've consulted HighPoint with some questions, but they aren't sure what's wrong, and I'd like to eliminate the "Hackintosh Component" to my quandry before thinking the card is faulty. They stated that pre-formatted drives WILL mount as "legacy" drives, so they should work. I don't have any spare drives right now to try building an array with, however.

 

Thanks in advance, and special thanks to all the posts that have helped me in the past with the decisions to build my computer.

 

x.

[RepomanUK]

Hey xrays - I have that exact same card and it worked flawlessly in my P5E mobo for the last year or two, and since moving over to a new GA-EP45-UD3LR it still works, but I'm having some problems with conflicting kexts and some other hardware.

 

Basically, yes it should be fine. Try Boot-132 type install and add the RR2300 kext to the extension cache. You should then be able to access the raid controller during install and format the array as gpt HFS+. Then install as normal. The challenge for me now configuring the RAID controller after installation to work with my damn DVD drive!

 

Oh forgot - you mention pre-formatted drives - are you trying to mount a RAID set you made using a different controller? I don't know if that's gonna work my friend!

[xrays]

Basically, yes it should be fine. Try Boot-132 type install and add the RR2300 kext to the extension cache. Oh forgot - you mention pre-formatted drives - are you trying to mount a RAID set you made using a different controller? I don't know if that's gonna work my friend!

 

Ok, I'm still relatively new at the whole Hacintosh thang, so I don't know where to find (or how to build) the appropriate kext file, nor did I know I would need one. I tried searching for it on the net, but came up with nothing. Can you post yours or a link to one online somewhere? And going forward, when adding anything similar to my clone, will I be needing to find or build kexts, or do most things work or not work in this environment?

 

And as far as my previous drives, they're just single GUID formatted drives with data, no RAID partitions or anything, and HighPoint said they should mount just fine when connected to the card, just that they'd need to be be reformatted to be used as RAID, per se. I would just like to get them mounted to verify the card interfaces as expected, then when I know it works I'll go out and grab 4x1.5TB drives and try to configure a RAID-5 array to slave all my work files from (sound & video editing).

 

Thank you for your input, if this works, you will have made my day!

 

x.

[thorazine74]

I dont have that hardware, but "the kext" is just the nickname for the particular driver file that is used to control some piece of hardware, i.e RR2300.kext (I dont know the actual filename for this case, just as an example), it should have been installed with the Highpoint drivers package, it should be in \System\Library\Extensions, and if loaded correctly it should appear in System Profiler->Software->Extensions, and most likely you will see some the card's ports appear somewhere in System Profiler->Hardware (not sure where? SATA or RAID?). That should appear even without drives detected or even plugged I think, if it doesnt maybe the drivers are not installed correctly...

[xrays]

I dont have that hardware, but "the kext" is just the nickname for the particular driver file that is used to control some piece of hardware, i.e RR2300.kext, it should have been installed with the Highpoint drivers package, it should be in \System\Library\Extensions, and if loaded correctly it should appear in System Profiler->Software->Extensions, and most likely you will see some the card's ports appear somewhere in System Profiler->Hardware

 

OK, yes, I do in fact have that kext installed (Find didn't locate it, but I found it manually in the /Extensions folder as expected). With the card installed, System Profiler shows the following that isn't there with the card out of the machine:

 

Parallel SCSI:

SCSI Parallel Domain 0:

Initiator Identifier: 18446744073709551615

 

And then when viewing the loaded extension:

rr2310_00:

Version: 2.2.1

Last Modified: 22/05/08 1:43 AM

Get Info String: Version: 2.2.1, Copyright © 2008

HighPoint Technologies, Inc.

Location: /System/Library/Extensions/rr2310_00.kext

kext Version: 2.2.1

Load Address: 0x7f6a7000

Valid: Yes

Authentic: Yes

Dependencies: Satisfied

Integrity: Unknown

And so, I'm now left wondering how to make the card talk to the OS as expected, because it appears there must be a miscommunication somewhere. If anyone knows how to modify the kext to work, please let me know (my kext is attached for reference). HighPoint recommends installing the 2310 drivers, which is why the kext is the 2310 version, could that be part of the problem? Maybe a conflict with something the kext requires that I don't have installed (or is different) due to the whole hackintosh situation?

 

x.

rr2310_00.kext.zip

[RepomanUK]

OK, yes, I do in fact have that kext installed (Find didn't locate it, but I found it manually in the /Extensions folder as expected). With the card installed, System Profiler shows the following that isn't there with the card out of the machine:

 

Parallel SCSI:

SCSI Parallel Domain 0:

Initiator Identifier: 18446744073709551615

 

And then when viewing the loaded extension:

rr2310_00:

Version: 2.2.1

Last Modified: 22/05/08 1:43 AM

Get Info String: Version: 2.2.1, Copyright © 2008

HighPoint Technologies, Inc.

Location: /System/Library/Extensions/rr2310_00.kext

kext Version: 2.2.1

Load Address: 0x7f6a7000

Valid: Yes

Authentic: Yes

Dependencies: Satisfied

Integrity: Unknown

And so, I'm now left wondering how to make the card talk to the OS as expected, because it appears there must be a miscommunication somewhere. If anyone knows how to modify the kext to work, please let me know (my kext is attached for reference). HighPoint recommends installing the 2310 drivers, which is why the kext is the 2310 version, could that be part of the problem? Maybe a conflict with something the kext requires that I don't have installed (or is different) due to the whole hackintosh situation?

 

x.

 

I don't mean to sound patronising, but have you accessed the 2300's BIOS and created your raid set yet? If not, you need to hit CTRL+H when prompted at boot time and tell the card how you want your array configured?

 

And you have the right kext. The only difference between the 2300 and 2310 cards is that the 2300 uses a PCI-E x1 slot and the 2310 uses a PCI-E x4 slot. The driver works with either.

[thorazine74]

Check in Disk Utility if you see the drives listed there.

Also check the card's bios if the drives are configured as you want them to be.

[xrays]

I don't mean to sound patronising, but have you accessed the 2300's BIOS and created your raid set yet? If not, you need to hit CTRL+H when prompted at boot time and tell the card how you want your array configured?

 

I have checked the BIOS utilities upon startup, and there seems to be nothing that would help me with simply mounting hard drives, but there are tools for creating new arrays - something I'm not trying to do right now. According to HighPoint, pre-formatted drives should mount jsut by plugging them into the card, and shouldn't need to be formatted again through the card. This is what I'm trying right now, because I don't have any empty drives to create an array with for testing those functions.

 

I will pick up a new pair of 1.5TB drives today/tomorrow and see what happens with creating and managing arrays directly through the card, but I would still like to know ahead of time that the card works as expected, with the ability to mount existing data drives just by connecting them to the card - which doesn't seem to work just yet. Is there maybe some setting in the BIOS that enables the card to function as a non-RAID card, a setting that I'm confusing as something that would erase my data? :-)

 

x.

 

PS> Thank you to everyone that's had some input on this so far!

[thorazine74]

Have you checked if you can see the physical disks in OS X and if you see one or two disks? You should see 2 disks if the drives are configured as individual drives and 1 if the controller is making a RAID array.

Try plugging 1 drive only at a time and see if you can see it, unless the BIOS is really buggy it should work in JBOD with any configuration.

[xrays]

Thanks for all the help, everyone, but the card never seemed to allow mounting of individual drives that were previously formatted. After I found a pair of 500GB drives, I was able to use the BIOS utilities to initialize them as RAID-0, and Disk Utility showed it as a single drive. After formatting, a quick benchtest revealed that the array was indeed faster than each individual drive (approx. 100-120MB/sec), but obviously could be faster with newer drives.

 

It is my understanding that JBOD configuration would also require initialization (I didn't actually test this), because it piles the drives up as one large contiguous block of empty data. However, maybe somoene with more experience with the card can confirm that JBOD setting would simply allow me to connect any drive at any time and access it as it was previously formatted.

 

Anyhow, as I was merely testing the basic functionality of the card, I have now returned it to the original owner so he may attempt to configure an array on his hackintosh, knowing that I succeeded in creating an array with empty drives.

 

For my own setup, I'm more interested in the 2320 or 3320 card, with support for 8 drives. I have a very large case that has up to 10 3.5" drive spaces, so I'd love to configure a pair of 4-drive RAID-5 devices for backups and general data and overall speed.

 

x.